It’s hard to find great quality for reasonable (not expensive) prices on Court and Smith streets these days. A friend in Carroll Gardens recently tried to go out for his birthday Saturday with his wife and found a two-hour wait at Frankie’s, Prime Meats and Buttermilk Channel. Hello Court Street! Of course, this has been the case down on the far end of Court since last summer.

If you want to escape the hype, a nice little secret of Carroll Gardens is Fragole’s, a lovely little trattoria on Court Street, between Carroll and 1st Place, serving sensational northern Italian fare in a cozy setting, for good prices. The restaurant itself is a bit run down, but it’s comfortable and rustic. What else do you need?

Just this weekend, we visited Fragole’s for an early dinner on Saturday. We tasted house-made fettucini with chewy porcini mushrooms and a cream sauce. The sauce was not heavy and the noodles were nice and firm. Salad eaters have several choices–we had the arugula, heart of palm, avocado salad. Strange mix but the result was light, fresh, filling. The meat and cheese tray was generous and diverse, with high quality hams sliced quite thin and several nice cheeses served with crusty, soft bread and little roasted onions.

The Americano coffee–espresso with hot water, here served as in many places in Europe, in a big thick porcelain cup–was rich and robust. Fragole’s Americano is so good it’s worth a trip just to enjoy it.